


Filling in Blanks

by CorpseBrigadier



Category: Death and Cremation (2010)
Genre: Age Difference, Canon-Typical Homophobia, Crime Scenes, Crossword Puzzles, Embedded Images, Epistolary, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-12-17 17:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21058334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: Personal observations from the journal of an unnamed federal investigator called in to handle a string of disappearances in Smith County after the former investigating detective comes to number among the missing.





	1. Sept. 2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Delphi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/gifts).

Sept. 2

They handed me the Fairchild case today: the one he was working on that's now the one involving him. The man took piss poor notes it seems, so it will take me a while to figure out what we know. Morbid as it sounds, I imagine he solved it after a fashion. I think we all acknowledge that he most likely ended up in much the same place as Weaver, Valentine, and Waters.

The players, locations, and timeline seem clear enough, although the two suspects could be anywhere by now and will likely get somewhere even farther off by the time I get my bearings. It may be judgmental of me, but it really should have been everyone's first instinct to question the isolated misanthropic jackass running a budget crematorium. Not every mystery reads like a novel, but this one certainly had the right cast. I have a feeling this is gearing up for some asshole to turn it into a Dateline special in a year or two.

The town fits the bill: uneventful, quiet, "a good place to raise a family." I can imagine Keith Morrison describing the dusty strip malls and quaint community park right now. I really hope I can get this wrapped up before it gets to the point that anyone's interviewing me.

  



	2. Sept. 5

Sept. 5

Spoke to Martha Leary today. She's a mess. I'm not recapping here what's in the official reports, but off the record she seems determined to drink herself into a state where this whole thing becomes a bleak, unremembered gap in her life. I tried to go easy on her with the forensics info. It is going to take us forever to sort through all those godawful boxes anyway, and most of it will be useless. Finding Lindsey Weaver's dental fillings already isn't painting a pretty picture though. Martha seems "hopeful" insofar as there's no evidence that her son is anything other than alive. Given the old man's choice of prior victims, I don't feel entirely optimistic. Note or no note, the two of them obviously haven't gone fishing.

What drove the kid to get caught up in this? I can certainly take a guess in this town. He wore black nail polish and played too much Grand Theft Auto; I'm surprised nobody pegged him as a candidate for the next Columbine. (Then again, nobody figured Stan might be up to something in his body disposal business that never seemed to get customers.)

I hate the food. The best place to eat it just called "The Dinor," where the coffee's thicker than the eggs. I can't afford to drive out to Tyler, though. I keep thinking what I'd do if I were stuck here, although it doesn't quite rise to murder.

  



	3. Sept. 19

Sept. 19

Courtney Faye is a goddamn godsend, even if she does have rotten taste in prospective boyfriends. She kept the cremation guide that Stan gave his employee, and while its grim reading material, it has a few clues. There are two pages dog eared, and while we can't know who marked what, they're pretty telling either way.

Both are in the introductory chapters. The whole long spiel about the history of death and burial and how we got to our modern era of cremation. The more predictable bit somebody marked off is a rather lurid description of mass graves in the Middle Ages, with some sort of passage about how there was a thought that plague was the natural outcome of mankind's wicked and uncharitable nature.

The second part was an account of Greek heroes being transformed into flowers upon their deaths: particularly beautiful boys whose blood hits the soil. It seemed... very Greek reading it over.

I dismissed all the talk calling both individuals "faggots" before, given that to people around here, anything more outre than a slight difference of opinion on sports teams warrants such accusations. Still, it's not out of the question that Jarod wasn't just being groomed to be a serial killer.

  



	4. Dec. 27

Dec. 27

Merry Christmas to nobody, but also to me. It's taken long enough. 

Jarod did a very teenage goth thing, apparently, and hid a composition notebook behind some loose paneling on the trailer. It has a lot of bad poetry and a lot of those freaky little sketches he made. It also has a lot of language that seems to speak to at least some of my earlier hunches, although it's nothing conclusive. Just lots of vague stuff about what people can't understand and how he wishes sometimes he were normal (but not normal like "those fucking preps").

There's a sketch of Stan on a back page. It looks a lot handsomer than any picture or account of Stan makes him out to be. It could just be that Jarod isn't a very good artist, but given his penchant for the grotesque, I can't imagine an inclination to draw people as excessively pretty is what's behind this. I can't imagine this was Stan's commission either.

Martha claims she had no clue. Martha said it wouldn't have mattered.

  



	5. Jan. 21

Jan. 21

They found a screw that seems consistent with the one Fairchild evidently had in his hip following a fifth grade plummet from a tree. It had rolled into a vent. It's all such depressing work combing through that much ash, and when you find something it's never particularly heartening.

I keep feeling like I'm missing something obvious in all this, and going through stack after stack of Stan's papers, I feel like that's almost the point. Not to wax eloquent over these two, but it seems like most of their lives fell into the unspoken--into blanks. The puzzles, the game shows, the things they didn't say to anyone, the "what if" about their relationship. Everything is a gap. Everything seems to develop through inference. It's like trying to trace the pattern of a piece of lace by only knowing where the holes are.

Outside of forming a psychological profile though (which isn't what I'm qualified to do), all that doesn't get me anywhere. It's just another blank.

I need to swing back home soon. I hope there's a lead soon and that it comes up somewhere other than that godforsaken town.

  



	6. Feb. 12

Feb. 12

Ask and ye shall receive it seems. The night clerk at a middle-of-nowhere motel along Route 80 apparently just went missing, and the early morning cleaning staff recall that he was throwing a conniption about "a couple of fruits" coming in. His absence was reported when there was nobody at the desk as of 8 AM--well after both mystery guests were gone.

Accounts vary as to how involved the two seemed to be. One staff member believes that the sounds from their suite were from a late night slasher, given that they shelled out for pay-per-view. Another has opinions more in keeping with those of the now missing clerk. Both give descriptions that resemble Jarod Leary and Stanley Fiscke: eyeliner, psoriasis sores, the whole of it. Even employees who aren't transparent bigots noted them as awfully affectionate.

The real seal-the-deal identifier though, at least for me, was the hand drawn crossword they found on a torn out page of the Gideon's Bible. It's obviously a rough draft, and nobody has quite gotten to solving it as of this afternoon, but... it's a crossword.

I imagine we'll find some secret filling out those empty boxes, although I doubt it's wherever that clerk has gone.

  



	7. The Puzzle

|  |  |  |  |  5T |  |  2Y | O | U |  1R  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
|  |  |  |  | O |  |  |  |  | E  
|  |  |  |  | M |  |  |  3F |  | M  
|  |  4V |  6A | L | E | N | T | I | N | E  
|  |  | C |  |  |  |  | R |  | M  
|  |  | C |  |  |  |  | S |  |  B  
10L |  8O | V | E |  |  |  |  | T |  | E  
| N |  | P |  |  9W |  |  |  |  | R  
| E |  |  7T | H | I | S |  |  |  |   
|  |  |  |  | T  |  |  |  |  |   
|  |  |  |  | H  |  |  |  |  |   
  
  
1 Down. To recall/recollect  
2 Across. 2nd per. plural poss. (vs. thine)  
3 Down. Prime, principal  
4 Across. 3 cen. Christian Saint of letters & birds  
5 Down. A book (but it's really 2 words here)  
6 Down. To come to terms with  
7 Across. "____ was a man" - Julius Caesar  
8 Down. -12  
9 Down. "Down ____ the Sickness"  
10 Across. The only word here I need you to read  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Note:** I've tested the CSS/HTML here on a number of browsers, and it appears to be doing what it ought. Should it mess up spectacularly, however, an earlier draft of this page is available [here](https://corpsebrigadier.neocities.org/images/ao3_images/ao3images_fillinginblanks_03.png) with the text and crossword as a handwritten part of the image.
> 
> **Stuck?:** If you're having trouble solving the puzzle (or just don't want to do so), you may highlight cells within the crossword to reveal letters. Writing each word in the order it is numbered will uncover a message.

**Author's Note:**

> Image Credit: [Jeric Santiago](https://www.flickr.com/photos/dawgbyte77/3058183665) ([CC 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)); [Devanath](https://pixabay.com/photos/paper-texture-butter-raw-yellow-1214978/) ([CC 1.0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/))
> 
> Crossword generated via [The Teacher's Corner](https://worksheets.theteacherscorner.net/make-your-own/crossword/)
> 
> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.


End file.
